It's all about the container--inspiration hit just as I was throwing this tin out. It was the perfect compliment to the recipe book I was making for a bridal shower. Reduce. Reuse. Re-purpose. Recycle.

Another big week with loads of flowers going out to make lots of people happy. New this week fuchsia plume celosia, second wave delphinium, highland millet, foxtail millet, tapestry millet, ornamental oregano and zinnias!!We have a new crop of sunflowers, dark centered, mini suns and some green centered suns. We have gorgeous new variety of zinnia--raspberry, a deep red-violet, somewhere between red and burgundy scabiosa. (See photo below.)If you follow bindweedfarm on instagram you will have seen the photo of the nigella pod with the top snipped off. We have my sweet friend, Polly of Robin Hollow Farm, to thank for that inspiration. Unfortunately we are down to the last bucket of pods. Please consult your email and faxes for current availability and have a gorgeous sunny weekend.

Buongiorno! There are some beautiful flowers for this week, newly blooming and new to Bindweed. If you are lucky you'll get some Orlaya, pictured below. It is a short flower but has a big impact, only 8-10 inches tall it looks like a cross between viburnum "Lace Cap" and a hefty Queen Anne's lace. Very romantic. Also new are the nigella pods in lime green and chocolate burgundy. We have grown monarda citriordora before but not for some years, RT loves it and so do the humming birds. It looks like something out of a Dr Seuss book, very whimsical, and smells lemony, hence the nickname "Lemon Beebalm". Definitely for the adventurous designer.

New cuts this week are "Green Mist", annual scabiosa, chocolate Susans, celosia and talinum, each are pictured below. We are nearing the end of the second cut of Clematis Recta, monarda and cosmos. The last crop of sweetpeas are spectacular--big hearty stems and flowers with a more ruffled appearance, deep rich colors and the unique fragrance. Don't miss out on these!

Please consult your email and fax availability, the demand is very high (thank you sincerely) and varieties are disappearing almost as fast as I can get them on the list.

A few new flowers at Bindweed available this week: double ruffle green-centered suns, mini-sunflowers, mini-lilies, a new orange lily, nigella pods and white salvia. The mini-suns are about the size of a large scabiosa on long stems with a yellow-green face. Double ruffle green suns are large with multiple layers of tiny petals surrounding a dimpled green center. The mini-lilies are much smaller, about half the size of an Asiatic, bright yellow with a wine freckled center . We also have a new orange Asiatic lily, deep melon orange also with a wine freckled center. Just as we harvested the last nigella flowers the nigella pods were forming. The pods are a deep chocolate to maroon. We have grown blue salvia for a few years and would occasionally find a white flowered plant, it was love at first sight! The heads looks like velvet white grape hyacinths, just gorgeous.

New flowers for this week: Blackeyed Susans, clarkia, cloud larkspur, foxglove, lavender, white phlox and verbena. The lavender and floxglove are on the short side this year, strange weather swings, but they are lovely.

The clematis recta and clematis integrifolia are re-blooming and we just started cutting the third crop of sweet peas. They are a summer variety with thicker, stronger, shorter stems--a sturdier, stockier variety for the heat of summer. What they lack in stem length they make up for with their slightly ruffled petals. RT could not discern the difference but Sam and I (we cut the majority of sweet peas) were struck immediately by their unique structure. We love them.

Despite the wet weather we have some beautiful flowers--but it does give me great empathy for our friends growing flowers in the Pacific Northwest. I thought farming in the desert was challenging--but hot and dry I can deal with!We are running out and cutting like mad in between showers but you will see some dirty flowers again this week. Just in case we were not able to get every bunch completely dry please un-sleeve your flowers upon receipt and strip each bunch before storing them in the cooler. The foliage can retain moisture and turn spotty--not a good thing.The dahlias are really producing now and the stems are getting longer. We have gorgeous fall colors and a lovely pink and white. The zinnias are particularly vibrant this week--they are not fading in the sun. We have white, lime, yellow, orange, red, coral and pink.We have rows and rows of sunflowers. We are hoping for enough warmth to open so we will have enough to fill your orders.

Sunflowers and storms. Storms and sunflowers. This week has been full of both--we had a massive storm Wednesday afternoon that left us with many mini-lakes but no real damage! Yeah! The bells of Ireland, sunflowers, delphinium, atriplex and amaranth that usually lay down under such pressure are just fine. We lost most of the snaps, but have a new crop coming on soon, so no worries there. The only real damage are dirty flowers--when the rain hits our dry Idaho soil it bounces right up and sticks on EVERYTHING. We do our best to tidy up but the flowers this week have a lot of dirty stems. It is just a matter of giving them a rinse before use, our apologies for the extra work. (We do not rinse them because we cannot store them in the cooler wet and with the high temperatures the flowers must be chilled down as soon as they come in from the fields.)New this week are amaranth, euphorbia, new colors of dahlias and lisianthus.The demand this year is way up--thank you one and all--so please pre-order whenever possible as we have not had a lot of room on the trucks for extra flowers and we hate to disappoint you.

My apologies for not posting last week...it was massive as you all know. And well, sometimes you just need to stop and smell the roses...or in my case, stop and be with grandchildren.But the farm waits for no one, there are flowers EVERYWHERE and we have a full list with some new goodies. We have zinnias in a rainbow of colors, dahlias TDF, ornamental oregano, lisianthus, atriplex and new crops of asclepias (which will be shorter because it is establishing itself), Black Eyed Susans, delphinium and snaps. The sweet peas continue to amaze, although we are dropping some colors as they are beginning to suffer in the heat. So please take a look and let us know what we can get for you.

Sunflowers. RT has planted a ton of sunnies and they are blooming now. We planted in succession so we hope to have sunflowers available each week until it freezes here.

Apologies first, I am really late with this week's post--sorry to Sun Valley as your orders are in and we are practically out the door. But, for future reference and for the rest of the week here is a very abbreviated entry for the week. Please check your fax and email for the most current availability--we will probably be sending out a new list tomorrow for the Jackson area, things are going so fast. Thank you, thank you for your fabulous orders!